I hear it all the time…
“Virtual is about efficiency and streamlining…”
“I prefer email to telephone calls or snail mail…”
“We don’t even order stationery anymore…”
“Of course I told my clients Happy Birthday, I sent them an ecard…”
“Of course I have not forgot the need for a personal note card here and then, that is why I subscribe to sendoutcards.com…”
Sometimes a little flair (or what I call web-sexiness) will make all the difference. Take a look at a recent change I just made to the blog here (see it live over in the right hand column). I am interested to see if my subscriber averages increase due to this little (but dramatic) change. I will make sure to update you!
The images will mostly speak for themselves:
Before:
Click here to read more »
As a project manager I work with projects from idea to fruition all the time, so seeing something evolve is nothing new. However, I will be honest, I mostly work with product launches and initial implementations. Typically after the first 6 months I am out of the picture and replaced by a General Manager or Operations Manager. That’s fine, because it gives me a chance to take on other projects.
However, late last year I started my own project, IAC-EZ, an online bookkeeping software, dedicated to Freelancers and Micro-Businesses. We are creeping up on our 1 year mark (November 1st 2009) and I am starting to get nostalgic. She is growing up! (I say growing up and not grown up, because as an SaaS we have to continue to evolve and grow to remain competitive).
It has been awhile and I have been a bit sick with the flu, but I wanted to update my readers on my home office (post 1 here and post 2 here). We are about 50% completed.
The new AC has been installed.
The new desk has been installed.
The two 24″ monitors were swapped out for two 27″ monitors (and a beefier video card and power supply to boot – thanks @dszp).
The curtains were installed.
Just a really short note to let you know that the Ductless A/C unit got installed today. A colleague of mine is coming to take the portable unit off my hands tomorrow 
If you don’t know ‘what’ I am talking about, check out my earlier blog post here.
Otherwise – this is just a quick update to let you know where we are at. This may all get done much quicker than the three months I thought it would. Thanks to great readers like Erson, Leo and David, I have all my technical questions sorted out and am ordering my Video card and new power supply (evidently it is better to be safe with a more robust power supply with the new video card) tomorrow!
I am excited. Super-duper excited! If I could do back flips I would; I’m that excited.
(Did I tell you I was excited?)
We are going to redesign my home office over the next 3 months. It’s going to take some work but I am super-excited to finally have the wheels in motion. As you know by now, I am an organization freak and while my office is organized, it could be much better with some changes.
If you follow me on twitter you have seen a ton of recent tweets about @emailcenterpro, about ‘click – click – move – move’, and about Inbox 0!
Some of you may be wondering: How I am doing that? Others may already know because you subscribe to my Tips in 10 email newsletter. I won’t write it out in detail (but if you want to get the step by step instructions, just subscribe to my Tips in 10 newsletter using the sign-up form on the right hand side of this blog post).
At IAC Professionals, we have a 90 day training period, where our Virtual Assistants are put through a boot camp, for lack of a better term. During those 90 days, they don’t work with clients, rather they work on small tasks that are assigned to them, and part of a larger project, while supervised by a project manager. This time period gives us a chance to see (and possibly work on) their professionalism, response time and abilities. Our project managers are patient individuals, and spend time making sure that the client is happy with the end result. This 90 days allows us to assure that if they were to work directly with a client, they would give the professionalism, efficient response and work quality that our clients demand.
In order to be able to have this period, we need a steady flow of project related work, so when the volume is low or when we have an exceptionally large amount of candidates in the training period, we hop on over to Elance and see if there are any projects that would be ideal for us.
